Content about Business

May 10, 2013
Give Employees Learning They’ll Love

It’s difficult to entice workers to embrace training if the content is mediocre, uninteresting, irrelevant, or offered at times when they don’t have freedom to focus. To get the most value from educational initiatives, organizations need to focus on the individual learner. Prioritizing a few key concepts can successfully shape a professional development program.

By Michael Ninness, Senior Vice President, Product and Content, lynda.com

Too often training goes unused. It’s not relevant to the learner or fails to address a specific concern in a moment of need.

Even when training is consumed, learning does not always occur. And because technology and information are rapidly evolving, content used in training quickly becomes outdated.

April 25, 2013
Training Empowers Employees to Make Smart Benefits Decisions

Water treatment company Severn Trent Services broadened its benefits communication efforts to offer more intensive tools and resources, one of which provided a dynamic, training-based approach. As a result of this change, the company observed much higher rates of benefits engagement at new hire orientation and annual enrollment.

By Justyn Harkin

It happens every benefits enrollment season at every company around the country. Employees who want to get the whole benefits enrollment process over and done with simply sleepwalk through some of the most important decisions they could be making for themselves and their families for the rest of the year.

Something has to be done to wake these employees up!

April 18, 2013
Training Increases Employee Retention

The fear for many companies is that they spend time and money developing people, only to see them take those newly acquired skills to another company. However, training actually can increase employee retention, when the training reinforces the value of the employee. In addition, a well-designed training program plays a critical part in nurturing associates’ psyches.

By Joe Lipham, Training Account Manager, Signature Worldwide

I thought I had hired the perfect person for the front desk. She was bright, articulate, and eager to learn the hotel business from the ground up. She was going to be my front desk star. I arranged an interview with the front office manager and she agreed: star material! Imagine my surprise and disappointment when two weeks later my new star was in my Human Resource director’s office offering her resignation.

February 28, 2013
Establishing Alignment in Employee Performance Management

Key to alignment is ensuring that employees understand the relevance of their contributions and taking the appropriate measures to ensure they remain engaged. Here are six steps organizations can take to gain enterprise-wide alignment.

By Marcel Messier, President and COO, Technomedia

February 11, 2013
Engaging Employees With a Healthy Nudge

Employers recognize the evidence that making health and wellness programs available to their employees makes sense—dollars and cents. But what they also are seeing is that offering such programs isn’t enough. Getting employees to use them is turning out to be the real challenge.

By Peter Saravis, CEO and Co-Founder, Evive Health

One of the fundamental goals of any Human Resources professional is finding the most effective way to motivate employees and to engage them in ways that allow them to be their very best. But central to this simple truth is the reality that employees cannot perform as hoped if they are not healthy. And that puts corporate America at a disadvantage.

January 23, 2013
The Importance of Measurement in Employee Engagement

Measurement of employee engagement is the first and most critical step in improving it. With this information in hand, managers are better equipped to empower employees by providing clear expectations and feedback that will allow them to succeed while improving customer service and overall company profitability.

By Alan E. Hall, Founder and Chairman, MarketStar (now a division of Omnicom)

Imagine half of your workforce going through the motions while looking for other employment. According to a recent Gallup study on employee engagement, approximately 54 percent of employees in the United States are not engaged in their organization (http://www.gallup.com/poll/150383/Majority-American-Workers-Not-Engaged-Jobs.aspx).

January 11, 2013
Employee First Impressions: A “Mulligan,” Please?

First impressions are remarkably persistent. This is particularly true for new hires. Next-generation HR technologies are evolving into socially infused applications that recognize the value of the employee experience. This provides a valuable opportunity for organizations to leverage these systems to positively influence a host of HR programs/activities—specifically, employee “preboarding.”

By Cary Schuler, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, cfactor

I always love self-righteously claiming my right of a “Mulligan” as it’s often referred to in golf. You didn’t like that drive? No worries, just tee up another ball and try again…

Unfortunately, Mulligans don’t work so well in our professional lives.

December 20, 2012
Home Loan Program Can Help Attract and Retain Employees

The Hometown Home Loan Program helps both employers and employees. It enables employers to offer a low-cost, high-reward benefit to their overall benefits package, and employees get both financial help and real estate education to make smarter home buying decisions.

By Dianne Wasson, Vice President & Affinity Lending Manager, HomeStreet Bank

Back in the early 1990s, the city of Seattle faced a challenge. Due to the high costs of living in the city, police and fire department employees were forced to live in surrounding suburbs and neighboring cities, resulting in lengthier commutes. For these critical employees, response time—and hence proximity—was an issue.

November 19, 2012
Keys to Train Seasonal Employees as Brand Ambassadors

To ensure a jolly holiday season, businesses must prepare the seasonal workforce to own the customer experience by demonstrating commitment to training and focusing on the building blocks of customer experience success.

By K.C. Blonski, Senior Director, Travel, Leisure, and Retail Markets, AchieveGlobal

Despite a still-sputtering economy, consumer confidence continues to grow as retailers up the ante when it comes to delivering customer service. With the holiday season in full swing, and retail success dependent on exceptional service, retailers cannot rely solely on holiday decorations and seasonal promotions to drive traffic and ultimately brand loyalty. They must focus on owning the customer experience.

November 5, 2012
Loews Hotels’ Secret to Being a Good Neighbor

Loews Hotels’ Good Neighbor program is moving into its third decade as the longest tenured hospitality corporate responsibility program. It partners with DonorsChoose.org, an organization that helps to support teachers in the classroom by soliciting individuals to fund class projects.

By Margery Weinstein

Loews Hotels’ Good Neighbor program, recently recognized by Condé Nast, is moving into its third decade as the longest tenured hospitality corporate responsibility program.

November 1, 2012
Case Study: Accelerating New Employee Productivity at Savvis, A CenturyLink Company

Savvis’ Global Learning and Development team was able to design an onboarding program that would quickly integrate and educate new employees while also building champions for the process within the business. So it wasn’t doing something to the organization; it was creating a program with the organization.

When Jim Sokolowski arrived at Savvis Communications in 2010 to begin as director of Global Learning and Leadership Development, the company was experiencing double-digit growth, along with a change in senior leadership that brought a renewed commitment to human capital as a strategic enabler and competitive advantage. The challenge was to effectively build the organization’s learning function from the ground up. Taking on such an effort brought up the question of where to start as there were plenty of obvious places that demanded attention.

September 28, 2012
Keeping Employee Information Safe in the Clouds

Carefully assessing your level of risk, thoroughly vetting the service provider, and having clear specifications in the servicing agreement can help mitigate the risks of storing HR information and records in a cloud computing environment.

By Caryn Tijsseling, Litigation Partner, Lewis and Roca

The increasing popularity of cloud computing will have far-reaching effects on the data management systems of many companies. One area where cloud computing can have a major impact is on the storage of Human Resources (HR) information and records. In fact, recent studies indicate that up to 84 percent of surveyed companies either are transitioning or planning to transition their Human Resources functions to more accessible and affordable data management systems such as cloud systems.

July 26, 2012
Connecting Vision, Talent, and Development Efforts to Engage Employees

Engaging and inspiring a workforce starts at the heart of the matter: your company’s goals. If an organization has a mission that engages and inspires the right employees, it can transform the company culture, and those effects will reverberate through how the company does business and deals with clients.

Every company wants their workers to be engaged, inspired, and working toward a common goal. But not every company has a plan for making that happen. An engaged and inspired workforce inspires people to work for your company, do business with your employees, and buy your products. How does an organization set itself apart as a place where people want to work and that people want to work with?

July 18, 2012
Soapbox: Employee Engagement—Why Care?

Organizations face daunting challenges and need to use every resource at their disposal to stay competitive. An engaged workforce that performs with energy, focus, and commitment is critical to organizational survival. Addressing the issues that drive engagement levels is a significant strategy to move from surviving to thriving.

By Ross Tartell, Ph.D.

Over the last decade, employee engagement has developed as a vital component of Human Resource strategy. But economic realities during the last few years have narrowed the focus of some companies to concerns about cash flow and sales, leaving employee engagement forgotten amid the imperative for economic survival. Stagnant growth and high unemployment characterized an environment that caused many employers to act as if employees were lucky to have a job and could easily be replaced if they didn’t produce.

May 14, 2012
Developing Your High-Potential Millennial Employees

Nine best practices and ideas for HR professionals looking to engage, retain, and develop high-potential Millennial employees.

By Brad Karsh, President, JB Training Solutions

Are your Millennials prepared to be your company’s future leaders?

Every day more than 10,000 Baby Boomers reach the age of 65. This is going to keep happening every single day for the next 18 years. This startling statistic has chills running down the spines of HR professionals as they think about the organizational challenge of managing this drastic demographical shift in the workforce. Engaging and retaining the newest crop of workplace talent is a daunting challenge, but it has never been more important.

March 30, 2012
6 Management Practices for Affecting Workplace Climate

Many employees put teamwork and recognition at the top of the list of keys to improving workplace climate, but each business climate depends on the goals of the business. Focus on analyzing the kind of climate you need, whether it’s about innovation, customers, or collaboration.

By Maggie Walsh, Ph.D., Vice President and Practice Lead, Leadership for Forum

March 30, 2012
Dispelling the Myths of Creating a Winning Corporate Culture

Avoidance—and even outright denial—of the need to make corporate culture development a “Mission Critical Objective” lies in five common myths that destroy the impetus for any organized effort to create, build, and nurture a winning corporate culture.

By Joseph Gianni, President and CEO, 2logical

Few would deny the majestic power of a winning corporate culture. When the odds are stacked against the success of a mission critical corporate objective, a strong corporate culture can persevere through all kinds of challenges and setbacks—and make, well, even the impossible…possible.

Even in the most turbulent market conditions, a strong corporate culture can shorten the recovery time from minor or major setbacks by as much as tenfold, when compared to an organization lacking the “right stuff.”

March 27, 2012
Bridging Generational Workplace Chasms

The Department of Labor projects that by age 32, today’s young adults will have had approximately eight jobs, an average of about 1.5 years at each company. Here are best practices Ambius employs to attract and retain Gen Y/Millennial workers while honoring and empowering its Gen X and Boomer employees.

By Jeff Mariola, President, Ambius

 “All Baby Boomers who grew up during the period between 1946 and 1964, are afraid of technology.” “Gen Y/Millennials (born between 1982 and 2001) don’t want to work hard.” Have you heard these stereotypes? As a “Boomer” who oversees thousands of people in North America and Europe, I believe there are inherent challenges in managing divergent generations of colleagues, but the opportunities for growth and renewal are far greater.

March 27, 2012
Salespeople Are Different—and So Are Companies

If your company’s sales training program isn’t in tune with the organization’s culture, history, and preconceived notions, it may bring polite nods but deliver little else. Here are five aspects that can’t be overlooked.

By Ken Wax

My recent article explored “10 Reasons Why Training Salespeople Is Different and What You Can Do About It” (http://trainingmag.com/article/yes-salespeople-are-different%E2%80%94and-so-training-them). It showed why the very nature of their work makes them different than most other groups.

March 27, 2012
The Art of Negotiation

Many people think William Shatner is the master negotiator based on his priceline.com commercials, but I believe my husband actually owns the title.

Many people think William Shatner is the master negotiator based on his priceline.com commercials, but I believe my husband actually owns the title. His dad was in auto sales, and he has continued the family tradition. In fact, he practices his wiles—I mean skills—on me on a regular basis.

March 26, 2012
The Global Mindset

Professionals who lived abroad for several years have learned to develop a global mindset the hard way, often experiencing painful failures, being forced to re-evaluate the way they approach foreign markets. Training employees and giving them the tools needed to develop the global mindset needed to succeed prior to engaging in international endeavors is by far the most effective way to conduct international business and retain employees.

By Valerie Berset-Price

March 23, 2012
A Rant on Big Meetings

Traditional big meetings are the ultimate lose-lose. The organization spends tons of money and yet has little to show for it. Why? Because the entire focus is on the content and not on the attendees. All that matters is what’s being shown versus what’s being learned.

By Dan Cooper, CEO, ej4.com

A special piece of the classroom experience is a standard ritual in organizations—the traditional “big meeting.”

A front-line Marketing specialist attended the annual two-day sales extravaganza. The meeting consisted of a steady stream of product manager presentations for full eight-hour days, with a 15-minute break in the morning and afternoon.

March 23, 2012
What NOT to Say

When it comes to customer service, tell learners about the bad things that happened to you—primarily to make them laugh about it, but also so they think about what notto do or say to a customer. Document every customer service interaction you have, or the experiences of others you hear about—especially the bad ones—so you can pass along the dos and don’ts to your learners.

By Gisele Canova

March 20, 2012
7 Rules for Total Transparency

Companies today must do business at the speed of NOW. In the NOW organization, The Quarterly Target Review makes problems clearly visible to everyone, reveals gaps between targets and actual performance, and, thus, provides a pivotal tool for maintaining transparency.

By John M. Bernard, Founder and Chairman, Mass Ingenuity

Companies today must do business at the speed of NOW, and a business that cannot see its problems will sink. In the NOW organization, The Quarterly Target Review makes problems clearly visible to everyone and, thus, provides a pivotal tool for maintaining transparency. A formal review of work ON and IN the business, the Quarterly Target Review puts a microscope on the business, revealing any gaps between targets and actual performance.

March 19, 2012
2012 Top Young Trainer Award Winners

Trainingmagazine named the winners of its 2012 Top Young Trainer awards, recognizing the top 40 training professionals age 40 and under. All Top Young Trainer candidates had to be nominated by co-workers or industry peers. All nominators had to submit a nomination form and a resumé for their candidate.

Training magazine named the winners of its 2012 Top Young Trainer awards, recognizing the top 40 training professionals age 40 and under. These executives will be profiled in the May/June 2012 issue of Trainingmagazine and online at www.trainingmag.com, and they will be honored at an awards ceremony in February 2013 at the Training 2013 Conference & Expo, World Disney World Resort, FL.